Already Planning for Next Year

ACL 3-day passes go on sale a year in advance. Even though the festival was just last weekend, we knew the day after it was over that the $50 3-Day Souvenir Passes would be on sale this week. This news has had me on red alert all week, as I also knew that these passes wouldn’t be announced before they were posted – they’d just be put up and sell out instantly.

Yesterday @aclfestival sent a tweet: “HINT: Giles, Giles and Fripp. #acl #aclfest #2011tickets.” That sent droves of people to the google, where we stumbled upon the entry for the 60s era band of that name. Wikipedia informed us all that they had a hit called Thursday Morning, which tipped the world off to when those tickets would go on sale. Unfortunately for anyone who happened upon that page more than 5 minutes after the initial tweet was sent out, the wiki page was quickly edited to omit that nugget of information. While a bit underhanded, I’ll take the leg up anyday.

Last night, I had terrible stress nightmares. One featured my repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to correctly type in my credit card number. Another scared me in to awakening by making me think that the Thursday morning ticket sale would start at 6:15am. Sleep wasn’t so sound after that.

Once I got to work, I planted at my desk. I grabbed coffee and a big glass of water on the way in, but would not be getting up for meetings, bathroom breaks, etc. Luckily I didn’t have to wait too long, and at 9:30am I refreshed www.aclfestival.com (for the 50th time that morning) and saw the “$50 BUY NOW” link active. My body erupted in what I can only imagine would be the same as if I were being chased by some sort of monster – cold sweat, shaking, heart threatening to explode, brain bouncing around inside my head. I somehow managed to get through clicking the appropriate links and entered my CC information correctly (ha! Take that, dreams!).

While I was able to make it through the order process relatively smoothly, many weren’t because of shoddy connections, less-than-instant reflexes, or simply not wanting it enough. There were too many people, not enough tickets. I salute you. Don’t give up… don’t ever give up.